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The most liveable cities tend to be mid-sized and
boring compared with the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2014 global liveability
ranking for big metropolises with London at 51st of 140 cities, just ahead of
mid-size Dublin at 46th.

Boring seems palatable in Melbourne at No. 1 for
the fourth straight year, followed by Vienna, Vancouver, Toronto, Adelaide,
Calgary, Sydney, Helsinki, Perth and Auckland - - note
that the Austrian and Finnish capitals are the only European cities in the top 10.

Dublin has a 20th rank in Europe and besides London, is ahead of Rome, Budapest, Manchester, Reykjavik, Lisbon and Athens.

The bottom global 10 from the abyss up is Damascus at
140; Dhaka, Port Moresby, Lagos, Karachi, Algiers, Harare, Douala, Tripoli and
Abidjan is at 131.

The EIU’s survey assesses a liveability ranking based on a number of key
factors, including stability (25%); quality of health care (20%); culture
and the environment (25%); education (10%) and infrastructure (20%).

The violent riots in 2011 and the threat of a
terrorist attack impacts London's attractiveness.

On cultural availability, London gets a top
score.

It's transport infrastructure is ranked poorly
but the ongoing London Crossrail project is Europe's biggest infrastructure
project and will have a positive impact.

Paris is at 18, Tokyo 18, Berlin 21, New York 56, Moscow 70
and Beijing 74.

The EIU says that when a five-year view is taken,
global liveability has declined by 0.68 percentage points, "highlighting the
fact that the last five years have been characterised by heightened unrest in
the wake of the global economic crisis, which has undermined many of the
developmental gains that cities may have experienced through public policy and
investment. Over five years 82 of the 140 cities surveyed have seen some change
in overall liveability scores. Of these cities, 51 have seen declines in
liveability."

Jon Copestake,
editor of the survey, comments, "Liveability
trends tend to move slowly, so it is unsurprising to see little or no movement
among the top ranked cities. But destabilisation has had a catastrophic impact
for some cities with a possible knock-on effect in neighboring countries."

Copestake added in a comment to the FT:
“the cities that tend to do the best [in the liveability index] tend to be the
most boring cities.”

“The things that make a city exciting, such as
diversity, may also be the things that create instability,” he said.